Austrian parliament backs Nazi victim fund
VIENNA, June 1 (Reuter) - Austria's parliament on Thursday
voted in favour of setting up a compensation fund for an
estimated 30,000 victims of dictator Adolf Hiter's Nazi rule,
all of them living abroad.
Deputies from most of Austria's political parties, including
the far right, backed a government bill to establish the 500
million schilling ($50 million) fund but the leftist Greens
voted against, arguing that the cash offered was not enough.
The Austrian coalition government of Social Democrats and
conservatives plans to compensate the thousands of people who
were thrown into concentration camps because they were Jews,
communists or homosexuals and those who fled into exile to avoid
persecution.
The fund was aimed at Austrians hounded from the 1938
annexation of Austria by the Third Reich to the end of World War
Two. Claimants would have to prove they were Austrian citizens
during that period and most will now have a different
nationality. Austrians who returned after 1945 have received
some compensation.
The Green Party said the delay in setting up the fund was a
national disgrace and demanded that 1.5 billion schillings ($150
million) be made available over five years.
Austria had avoided the question of compensation for most of
the postwar period and claimed that the country was the first
victim of Hitler's aggression. But political leaders have
publicly acknowledged in the past two years that Austrians were
also ``willing servants of Nazism.''

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